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Future automotive applications, like high-speed control in power train or drive-by-wire systems, demand large bandwidth, deterministic communication behavior, and fault tolerance. FlexRay, a new standard communication system, is ideally suited to safety applications as well as applicable to the role of a central backbone in future ECU network architectures. The FlexRay physical layer specification is kept very generic to provide the network designer with a wide range of possibilities for optimization of the network implementation. Due to the highly transient behavior of the system, the developer of the network physical layer cannot manually predict the behavior of an entire FlexRay topology. To analyze design concepts like topologies, terminations, and ECU architectures much earlier in development phase, simulation is the only choice.

Due to the increase in demand for comfort and safety features in today's automobiles, the internal vehicle communication networks necessary to accommodate these features are very complex. These networks represent a heterogeneous architecture consisting of several ECUs exchanging information via bus systems such as CAN, LIN, MOST, or FlexRay buses. Development and verification of internal vehicle networks include multiple design layers. These layers are the logical layer represented by the software application, the associated data link layer, and the physical connection layer containing bus interfaces, wires, and termination. Verification of these systems in the early stages of the design process (before a physical network is available for testing) has become a critical need. As a result, the need to simulate these designs at all their levels of complexity has become critically important.